Free To Choose: a personal Statement

The Tide ls Turning
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programs in employment and higher education and of many other
measures directed at implementing views favorable to equality of
outcome. So far as we know, no pollster has asked the public,
"Are you getting your money's worth for the more than 40 per-
cent of your income being spent on your behalf by government?"
But is there any doubt what the poll would show?
For the reasons outlined in the preceding section, the special
interests prevail at the expense of the general interest. The new
class, enshrined in the universities, the news media, and especially
the federal bureaucracy, has become one of the most powerful
of the special interests. The new class has repeatedly succeeded
in imposing its views, despite widespread public objection, and
often despite specific legislative enactments to the contrary.
The adoption of amendments has the great virtue of being
decentralized. It requires separate action in three-quarters of the
states. Even the proposal of new amendments can bypass Con-
gress: Article V of the Constitution provides that the "Con-
gress . . . on the application of the Legislatures of two-thirds
of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amend-
ments." The recent movement to call a convention to propose
an amendment requiring the federal budget to be balanced was
backed by thirty states by mid-1979. The possibility that four
more state legislatures would join the move, making the necessary
two-thirds, has sown consternation in Washington—precisely be-
cause it is the one device that can effectively bypass the Wash-
ington bureaucracy.
TAX AND SPENDING LIMITATIONS
The movement to adopt constitutional amendments to limit gov-
ernment is already under way in one area—taxes and spending.
By early 1979 five states had already adopted amendments to
their constitutions that limit the amount of taxes that the state
may impose, or in some cases the amount that the state may
spend. Similar amendments are partway through the adoption
process in other states and were scheduled to be voted on in still
other states at the 1979 election. Active movements to have
similar amendments adopted are under way in more than half

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FREE TO CHOOSE: A Personal Statement
the remaining states. A national organization, the National Tax
Limitation Committee (NTLC), with which we are connected,
has served as a clearinghouse and coordinator of the activities
in the several states. It had about 250,000 members nationwide
in mid-1979, and the number was climbing rapidly.
On the national level two important developments are under
way. One is the drive to get state legislatures to mandate Con-
gress to call a national convention to propose an amendment to
balance the budget—sparked primarily by the National Tax-
payers Union, which had over 125,000 members nationwide in
mid-1979. The other is an amendment to limit spending at the
federal level, which was drafted under the sponsorship of the
NTLC. The drafting committee, on which we both served, in-
cluded lawyers, economists, political scientists, state legislators,
businessmen, and representatives of various organizations. The
amendment it drafted has been introduced into both houses of
Congress, and the NTLC is undertaking a national campaign in
support of it. A copy of the proposed amendment is contained in
Appendix B.
The basic idea behind both the state and federal amendments
is to correct the defect in our present structure under which
democratically elected representatives vote larger expenditures
than a majority of voters deem desirable.
As we have seen, that outcome results from a political bias in
favor of special interests. Government budgets are determined by
adding together expenditures that are authorized for a host of
separate programs. The small number of people who have a
special interest in each specific program spend money and work
hard to get it passed; the large number of people, each of whom
will be assessed a few dollars to pay for the program, will not
find it worthwhile to spend money or work to oppose it, even if
they manage to find out about it.
The majority does rule. But it is a rather special kind of ma-
jority. It consists of a coalition of special interest minorities. The
way to get elected to Congress is to collect groups of, say, 2 or 3
percent of your constituents, each of which is strongly interested
in one special issue that hardly concerns the rest
of your con-
stituents. Each group will be willing to vote for you if you promise

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